Motivational Poster
The image-plus-quotation-plus-abstract-noun format, and the parody genre it spawned.
The motivational poster is a fixed visual formula: a dramatic photograph, a single abstract noun in large capitals (PERSEVERANCE, TEAMWORK), and a short quotation beneath it, usually attributed to a famous name. The genre was commercialised in the 1980s by Successories, whose product line established the template that offices worldwide reproduced.
As a quotation vehicle it is unusually lossy. The design allots perhaps a dozen words, so quotations are trimmed, smoothed, and detached from any citation; the attribution line carries a name and nothing else. Compression plus anonymity of source is exactly the environment in which misquotation thrives.
The form generated its own counter-genre almost immediately. Despair, Inc.'s 'Demotivators', launched in 1998, adopted the identical layout with inverted sentiment, and the internet's image-macro culture inherited both the template and the joke — a lineage that runs directly into the modern quote card.
For anyone producing them: the honest version keeps the quotation intact and adds the work and date in small type. It costs a line of layout and moves the artefact from decoration to reference.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't — you're right.”
Keep reading the glossary
A square, image-based social-media graphic in which a pull-quote is set in large type over a photograph or plain background.
A short, motivational line — often quoted, often misattributed — offered as consolation, exhortation, or self-help.
A short, image-anchored quote in the modern viral sense — quickly shared, easily altered, and prone to misattribution.
Assigning a quote to the wrong person — the most common error in quotation.